This morning’s prelude text is reprinted under onlicense.net #A-717945. Let All Men Sing – words by Keith Christopher, © 1997 Hal Leonard Corporation. All rights reserved.

♪ Music Notes ♪

KEITH CHRISTOPHER (b. 1958) is actively involved in music as a composer, arranger, orchestrator and producer. His musical roots go back to Wylie, Texas, where he grew up playing trumpet in band, accompanying in church, and singing in the church youth choir. He holds a Master of Music in Composition from Southern Methodist University where he was a Graduate Assistant in the music theory and choral departments. He has hundreds of musical pieces for choir, band, and orchestra in print with multiple publishers, and his music has been performed worldwide. In addition, he has produced over a thousand recordings for music publishers.

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI (ca. 1182-1226), born Giovanni di Petro di Bernardone, was an Italian Catholic friar, deacon, philosopher, mystic and preacher. He abandoned a life of luxury for a life devoted to Christianity after reportedly hearing the voice of God, who commanded him to rebuild the Christian church and live in poverty. He is the patron saint of animals and the environment.

WILLIAM HENRY DRAPER (1855-1933) was an English hymnodist and clergyman who wrote the texts for approximately sixty hymns. He is most famous for All Creatures of Our God and King, his translation of “Canticle of the Sun” by Francis of Assisi.

RISE UP, MY LOVE was composed for the wedding of Jay and Cindy Daley in 1988. Originally scored for organ and solo voice, it was transposed and revised for piano and men’s voices, and sung by the men of Fairlawn Avenue Senior Choir at the wedding reception of Gary and Weili Poole in July, 2012. The piano bed track heard in this morning’s virtual musical offering is from Special Music Sunday, April 28, 2013.

Perhaps all hymns are to some extent autobiographical in that they reveal something of the author’s spiritual experience, and in some hymns, the autobiographical thread is stronger and more obvious. Such may be the case with English Baptist hymn writer ROBERT ROBINSON (1735-1790). A line in the last stanza of his hymn text Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing (“Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love,”) is thought to be referring to Robinson’s early life, when he was sent to London to be a barber’s apprentice. It was during this time, according to hymnologist Kenneth Osbeck, that “he associated with a gang of notorious hoodlums and lived a debauched life”, until he came under the spell of George Whitefield – an English Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement. After Robinson’s conversion in 1755, he preached at a Calvinistic Methodist chapel in Suffolk, and then founded his own independent congregation in Norwich. Although lacking in formal education, he rose to great prominence as a preacher and scholar, and was the pastor of Stone Yard Baptist Church in Cambridge for nearly 30 years.

ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678-1741) was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. Vivaldi’s main teacher was probably his father, Giovanni Battista, who in 1685 was admitted as a violinist to the orchestra of the San Marco Basilica in Venice. Vivaldi composed many instrumental concertos for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as numerous sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons. Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. He worked there as a Catholic priest and teacher from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi (who earned the nickname “The Red Priest”, due to his distinctive reddish hair) also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, he moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi’s arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later.